


in his heart a storm

by picritic



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Briefly Feat. Asahi's Older Sister, Facing Fears, Getting Together, Learning to Overcome, M/M, Mention of Post-Timeskip Spoilers, Panic Attacks, Realizations, Social Anxiety, Thunderstorms, childhood fears, if you’re looking for something soft you’ve found it, tender moments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-17 15:28:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28976667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/picritic/pseuds/picritic
Summary: Azumane Asahi stopped sleeping with stuffed animals when he was thirteen. It takes a storm to bring them back.
Relationships: Azumane Asahi/Nishinoya Yuu
Comments: 11
Kudos: 68
Collections: Asanoya (main pairing)





	in his heart a storm

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote down the first few lines of this over a month ago. since then, it's swirled around, waiting to be put to paper, and over the last two days i finally succeeded. i'm very proud of this one and hope that you enjoy. 
> 
> (content warning for mild descriptions of panic attacks and social anxiety)

Asahi never used to hate sleeping in the same bed as someone else.

It used to be a comfort. When he was a baby, his mother tells him (fondly, exasperatedly), he would refuse to sleep unless someone was in the room with him. As a toddler, he would frequently run to his parents’ room and clamber atop their tall bed, curling up between his mother and father with a contented sigh. When he became too big to join his parents, his older sister Miyako – three years older, three years wiser, three years more gangly – would frequently wake up to him crawling into bed with her and wrapping scrawny arms around her waist, nuzzling his face into her midsection. 

These were the normal nights. 

There were other nights, too. Nights when thunder boomed in the sky above, or wind rushed through the mountain valleys in an eerie wail. Nights of fireworks during festivals, or nights filled with the noises of stray cats yowling in the street outside. 

It was these nights that found him curled beneath the blankets of his bed, shaking, head buried beneath mounds of pillows and stuffed animals until Miyako or his mother or his father (sometimes even his grandmother, when she was visiting) crawled into Asahi’s bed to hold him until the noises died down and the night calmed. It was only these nights that he slept willingly – wearily – in his own bed. 

It isn’t until his first middle school sleepover that he learns that his usual nighttime routine isn’t the ‘usual’. He’d never had sleepovers in elementary before – he’d always refused, not wanting to sleep at a strange house with a strange layout and bedsheets that smelled like strange detergent – but middle school is _different_ , everyone says. _Everyone_ has sleepovers in middle school. If you don’t have sleepovers you’re _weird_ , they say. 

(Maybe ‘they’ were only a few girls he’d overheard gossiping between classes, but ‘they’ still had an influence, and a pang of fear pierces his heart at the thought that he – taller than other boys in his class, with longer, gangly legs and longer, spindly arms and hair that already tickled the edge of his jaw – could be _weird_.)

The same day he overhears the girls, he builds up his courage and asks a boy from his volleyball team over for a sleepover that weekend. The other boy is a wing spiker, just like him – not too loud, not too frightening, not too _much_ , and they get along well enough that he considers him a friend. It was therefore not too much of a surprise when Kosuke agrees, and they make plans for him to join Asahi at his house on Saturday, just in time for dinner. They’d watch a movie, play Mario Kart on Miyako’s old Nintendo 64, then go to bed like normal. 

Except, it wasn’t normal. 

Asahi hadn’t realized how ‘not normal’ it would be until his mother pulls the spare futon out of the hall closet and lays it down on his bedroom floor. She smiles at him softly, proudly, so pleased that her little boy is growing up and maybe – _maybe_ – growing out of his clingy sleep habits, and leaves him alone with Kosuke, who is already making himself at home on the futon. 

The door closes behind his mother. Kosuke looks at him. Asahi barely pushes down his rising panic. 

Okay, so he hasn’t actually accounted for this. Panic is the thing that got him here in the first place, after all, and panic is not known for being organized and logical. He stares at Kosuke, his throat dry, and his tongue slides between his teeth until he’s trapped it between his canines. Kosuke looks back at him, mildly curious at first, and then vaguely unnerved. He pulls a Nintendo DS from his bag and starts tapping at the buttons, trying to ignore the weird – _so weird, so weird, so weird_ – way Asahi is looking at him. 

It takes longer than Asahi could have ever dreamed (nightmared?) to finally make his feet move. He steps carefully – carefully, so so carefully – over Kosuke’s sprawled legs, and when he crawls into his own bed, feeling the mattress sink beneath his knees, he almost shivers. 

Kosuke doesn’t talk, too focused on tapping buttons. Asahi is grateful for it. He doesn’t know what to say. His blankets feel too heavy on his legs, and his bed is too wide, and his pillows are bunched wrong, and and and and –

It feels like an eternity before Asahi’s mother pushes the door open to say goodnight. She murmurs the words, pride shining in her eyes at the sight of Asahi lying alone in his bed, a friend in the futon on the floor below (he’s getting so old, he’s the pride of his parents’ life, he knows something is _off_ ) and then the light is flicked off, bathing them in dim darkness broken by the dim glow of Kosuke’s DS screen and the soft flicker of Asahi’s goldfish-shaped nightlight. 

Asahi feels like there’s something sitting on his chest, making it hard to breathe. He waits, hearing the gentle tap of Kosuke’s fingers on the buttons like loud snaps in his ears. His heartbeat pounds through him; he can feel it through the tips of his fingers and his ankles and his temples. He doesn’t move.

If he moves, Kosuke will notice. If he moves, the spell breaks. 

It’s Kosuke who finally shatters the silence. He snaps his DS closed and shoves it under the pillow, then twists on his side to look up at the bed where Asahi lies. “Hey, Azumane.” 

His heart pounds louder. He tries to ignore it, and rolls over to peer over the edge of the bed at his teammate. He doesn’t trust himself to say anything, and so he doesn’t. 

“Goodnight,” is all Kosuke says, and Asahi’s jaw loosens – he hadn’t even realized he was clenching his teeth as hard as he was; his jaw actually feels _sore_ – and then Kosuke is rolling back over, his back to Asahi, and Asahi can barely get the words out to say ‘goodnight’ in return. It comes out as a barely-audible croak, but it’s enough.

He doesn’t sleep that night.

The next morning, he exchanges only the basic greetings with Kosuke before they sit down for breakfast, and then they eat breakfast, and then Kosuke is gone, and Asahi can breathe again. 

With breathing comes the panic, ignored and pressed down into a deep recess of his chest until the strange feeling of _intruder, intruder, intruder, intruder_ disappears out the door with his bag. It takes the form of a boy – doe-eyed and gangly and long-haired – curling up on the kitchen floor, pulling his knees to his chest as he breathes, breathes, breathes, inhaling as though the air in the room is not near enough to fill his lungs. 

His sister is the first to his aid, and she immediately curls up around him, pulling him into her arms – high school arms, strong arms – and pulling his face out of his knees to instead press it into her shoulder. Long fingers – _they could be setter fingers, if she played volleyball_ , the one volleyball-shaped braincell whispers, laughing at him as though it’s somehow separate from the parts of him that are currently hyperventilating on the kitchen tile – comb through his hair, gently teasing out tangles and smoothing her fingernails over his scalp in the way she does during thunderstorms. She whispers to him, making soft, hushing noises and pressing tiny reassuring kisses to the top of his head.

In her arms, he calms. 

In her arms, he decides that he will never let this happen again. In her arms, he decides it is time. In her arms, he promises himself that he will never _need_ to sleep in the same bed as someone again. 

In her arms, he promises himself that he will never need _someone_ again. 

~ x X x ~ 

Asahi lies partially on his stomach, partially on his side, resting his cheek in the narrow space between the pillows. His legs are sprawled wide like he’s in the middle of a run-up for a spike, taking up the entire bed. One arm lies flat against his side; the other has his hand tucked in under his chin in a pose reminiscent of The Thinker. 

He’s fallen asleep like this every night since he was thirteen. 

It didn’t start out this way, of course – for the first year after his initial resolution, he’d slept curled up around the largest pillow in the house, and then the largest stuffed animal, and so on. Over time, he’d managed to wean himself out of even those, and on his thirteenth birthday he put his stuffed animals in a shelf on his closet, promising himself he wouldn’t look at them anymore (because thirteen year olds who still sleep with stuffed animals are _weird_ , he hears his schoolmates’ voices whisper. His mother vehemently disagreed, as did Miyako, but they weren’t his classmates, they didn’t _know_ ). 

The first few months are impossibly hard, and he nearly snuck his way back into his parents’ or Miyako’s bed dozens of times, but he quickly set up a system for that. 

Every night, before going to bed, he scatters a small cupful of dice (scavenged from old, unused board games) across his bedroom floor. If he gets out of bed, he has to maneuver around them, giving him plenty of time to remember his self-imposed promise and re-think. After the first week or so, it starts to work. After the third month, he makes it through a thunderstorm by himself for the first time. After the eighth month, he begins to forgo the scattering of the dice altogether. 

Now, he’s a third year in high school. He hasn’t thought of his stuffed animals, hidden away in his closet, for years. He sleeps alone, face still buried comfortingly in the embrace of his pillows and his limbs sprawled across the plane of his bed like the mismatched arms of a clock. 

~ x X x ~

He’d had his second-ever sleepover in his first year of high school, again with a boy from his volleyball team. Well, it started out as just one boy from his volleyball team – a boy named Sawamura Daichi, who had a toothy smile and a big heart and a loud mouth – but less than an hour into it Daichi announced that they’d be joined by another boy from the team, Sugawara Koushi. When _he_ arrived it was with needling laughter and sidled jabs to Asahi’s side and teasing grins that wore down Asahi’s defenses to glass. Between the two of them, it was like being buffeted by torrenting water and soothed by solid earth, and Asahi – _weirdly_ , though that word didn’t seem so terrible anymore when his stomach hurt from laughing – felt like maybe sleepovers weren’t as bad as he remembered. 

It was Daichi and Suga who coaxed him through another sleepover, and another, and another, and then even through a team sleepover at their captain’s house. It was awkward at first – he had lain curled up on his futon surrounded by eleven other slumbering bodies, twitching away from any accidental contact – but he had eventually fallen asleep, a wall to his right and Suga snoring peacefully on his own futon to Asahi’s left. After that sleepover, Asahi thought he could take on the world. 

Second year, though, held a new challenge. 

Second year is when he met Nishinoya Yuu. 

The tiny first year entered his life like a bolt of lightning, of _loud_ and _large_ and _libero_. Their original third year libero was no match for Nishinoya’s relentless energy and overwhelming presence on the court, and the younger boy quickly joined their ranks as a starter. 

Asahi had always played volleyball. He played in elementary school, where he learned the basics, the rules, how to get the ball over the net. He played in middle school, where he started truly learning how to spike and how to serve and how to admire the sport. He played in his first year of high school, where he began truly feeling the sport turn into a game as his teammates gathered around him. 

It wasn’t until his second year of high school that he felt like he was truly playing volleyball, and it was all because of Nishinoya. 

The moment the libero stepped onto the court, the air behind Asahi became charged with electricity. It crackled at the back of his neck, rising the hairs there and making him glad that his hair was long enough to hide it. He didn’t dare risk looking back, because he knew – he _knew_ – that he’d meet a piercing brown gaze if he did so. 

No. He couldn’t risk that. 

And so he didn’t. 

But Nishinoya Yuu had a strange way of latching on to someone, and somehow – Asahi could never figure out why; the word _weird_ floated through his brain like a bamboo raft on troubled waters – Asahi became Nishinoya’s person. The libero would latch onto him after practice, a small hand wrapping gently around his wrist or reaching up to land on his shoulder or looping around his waist. He’d ask – loudly – about what Asahi saw from the top of his jump when he went to spike, what it was like going against blockers directly, what he thought about when he added power to his spike to break through the block the way he did. He’d chatter on excitedly about his running route in the mornings and how annoying his older sisters were and how much he wanted a dog. He asked Asahi questions, so many questions, always calling him Azumane-san and looking so pleased to just be in Asahi’s orbit that Asahi couldn’t help but start to respond. 

(It took less than a week of Nishinoya calling him ‘Azumane-san’ for Asahi to break and beg to be called by his first name. Nishinoya hugged him for that, and that, combined with hearing ‘Asahi’ come from Nishinoya’s lips – even with ‘-san’ still tacked on the end – made Asahi’s heart do a little flip inside his chest.)

The other second years seemed to think the whole situation was funny. Suga – far too observant Suga, far too mischievous Suga – tapped teasing punches into Asahi’s shoulder whenever he caught Nishinoya looking Asahi’s way, and Daichi had this sort of knowing smile that sent shivers down Asahi’s spine. They leaned in sometimes at lunch and whispered to Asahi, mentioning words like ‘admire’ and ‘revere’ and ‘crush’. Asahi was pretty sure he’d never blushed as hard as he did then, and this sent a whole new wave of giggles throughout their little trio. 

(Blushing at that? _Weird_ , a little voice in the back of Asahi’s head said.)

Asahi sidestepped the subject every time it came up from that point forward. Daichi and Suga stopped bringing it up. 

Until the fateful Datekou match.

Asahi felt the way Noya slipped into a second skin of calm, determined focus the second he stepped on the court. He felt him at his back, felt the eyes boring into the back of his head. 

On that day, Asahi looked back. 

It ruined everything. 

Asahi had always somewhat thought of Nishinoya as the wind: flexible, brash, roaring through valleys and wide-open spaces and whispering in the closed-off corners of forests and volleyball courts. But in his eyes now, as the ball comes hurtling towards their side of the court from a Datekou serve, Asahi sees the harsh flash of electricity. 

He is blocked out again and again during that game. Around him, steady earth seeks to build up a foundation beneath their feet and anxious, bubbling water searches desperately for a way around the iron wall that stands before them. Sparks bite at Asahi’s heels. 

He is blocked. 

Electricity arcs and shorts and _flares_. 

Asahi is alone in his bed, and his blankets are heavy, and his heartbeat sounds like the shattering of a vase. 

~ x X x ~

“Asahi-san!” 

Fingers snap softly in front of his face, pulling him from his reverie. He blinks up at Nishinoya from where he sits on the floor, paused midway through his post-practice stretch. “Noya-san,” he says. The name is a greeting. 

Nishinoya grins toothily at him, dropping to a crouch in front of him. “You wanna sleep over?” he asks. His eyes are wide, hopeful. 

It wouldn’t be the first time Asahi sleeps in the same room as the libero. They’ve done it a few times now, what with team sleepovers and training camps, and it’s only been in the last couple weeks – with Nishinoya back from his suspension and Asahi tentatively back on the team – that they’ve started speaking again. This, however, feels different. “Come over?” he echoes, sitting up a bit straighter. “To your house?” 

Nishinoya snorts, his grin stretching wider. “Obviously. Come on, Asahi-san, please? It’s the _weekend_!” 

Asahi averts his gaze from the force of that grin. Sparks, even controlled, still burn. “I dunno, Noya,” he replies softly, pushing himself back into his forgotten stretch. “I’ve got a lot of homework piled up I haven’t gotten to.” 

The libero purses his lips in annoyance. “Asahi-san, it’s one evening. Come on, my dad’s making curry and I need someone there to help fend off my sisters.” The annoyed look is gone as quickly as it appeared, and he’s again flashing Asahi an enormous grin that starts his stomach doing backflips. “Please?” 

A dozen excuses line Asahi’s tongue: homework, his mom working late tonight, needing to feed the cat that likes to hang out underneath Asahi’s window. He says none of them. Instead, he finds himself nodding, hair slipping out from his bun and sliding into his face. “Yeah. Okay.” 

Nishinoya’s hand darts out and tucks the stray strand back behind Asahi’s ear. His fingertips brush Asahi’s cheek. “Good, we’ll walk together,” he says, and before Asahi can say anything the other boy is gone, darting across the gym to – loudly – help Tanaka put the net away. 

The skin Nishinoya touched feels like it’s been burned. Asahi touches the pads of his fingers to the spot, his cheeks heating. 

Across the gym, Suga nudges Daichi. They both grin at him. 

_Oh no._

~ x X x ~

Walking home with Nishinoya is easy. It’s as easy as the air in his lungs and the sun on his face, as the pavement beneath his shoes, as the gentle burn of his muscles after a long practice. It feels _normal_ , despite the fact that they live in opposite directions of the school – Asahi to the east, Nishinoya to the west. Nishinoya keeps up a steady stream of commentary the whole way, marveling at the new first years – “that blonde one is even taller than _you_ , Asahi-san!” – and telling stories about what ridiculous mischief he and Tanaka managed to get up to during lunch. Asahi throws in comments here and there but mostly he listens, trying to keep his gaze from resting on the other boy’s face for too long. He watches the road ahead, feels the wind blowing through his hair, watches grey clouds gather on the horizon. 

They make it to Nishinoya’s house in what feels like no time at all. In the back of his mind, Asahi knows it’s probably a half hour walk, but it felt closer to ten. Nishinoya has a way of lulling him, he realizes, and he pushes that thought to a deep recess of his chest along with all the others. 

Stepping into Nishinoya’s house makes him forget about it altogether. 

His first thought is that it is _loud_. There is music playing from an mp3 dock in the corner. In a room down the hall he can hear two girls yelling about something (he hears the word ‘textbook’ and ‘ruined’ and immediately feels a tingle of college-induced anxiety rise in his chest, so he quickly shoves that thought down too). In the kitchen, he hears two men bickering, one older and one younger. Clad in his slippers, Nishinoya shouts “Tadaima!” at the top of his lungs, then skids across the floor to barrel into the kitchen. The voices get louder. 

Asahi is left standing in his socks in the entryway. 

He swallows hard, eyes darting around the room. His feet feel like bricks. It’s too loud, but he’s heard louder, and this is for Nishinoya. This is for that funny feeling he gets in his stomach when Nishinoya smiles at him. This is for how much he pushes down that funny feeling and pretends it doesn’t exist because it _can’t_.

Nishinoya reappears a moment later, an equally short, grey-haired man in tow. The man smiles at Asahi, and it’s Nishinoya’s smile on an elderly face. “You must be the young man my grandson is always telling me about. Azumane-kun, yes?” 

Asahi feels his cheeks flush pink at the recognition. “Yes,” he manages, dipping into a quick bow. “Thank you for having me.” 

The old man’s smile widens. “Nonsense. Come in. Tonight, you are part of the family.” He directs Asahi into the kitchen. The smell of curry strengthens. 

It turns out that the elderly man is Nishinoya’s grandfather. Nishinoya’s father stands over the stove making curry, and within the first few minutes of arrival, all three of Nishinoya’s sisters have crowded into the kitchen, eyes wide as they batter Asahi with questions.

(Every single person in the family is at least twenty centimeters shorter than Asahi. He has never felt like such a giant.)

Fortunately, before long, Nishinoya’s father announces that the food is ready, and they all file into the dining room.

As with everything else, dinner is a noisy affair. Nishinoya’s sisters make faces at each other and tease Nishinoya about everything from his grades to his hair (which is apparently a tease towards the middle sister, as well, as she’s the one who usually bleaches his bangs), to the way he eats. He gives as good as he gets, and is often backed by his grandfather (whose wry comments often almost cause Asahi to choke on his curry from laughing). As soon as the meal finishes, Asahi offers to help clean up but Nishinoya’s oldest sister – though they all look alike, so he just _thinks_ it’s the oldest sister – waves him away. “Shoo,” she instructs him, swatting his hand when he tries to pick up a plate. “You and Yuu go cause trouble somewhere else. We’ve got this.” 

Nishinoya grins at her, then grabs hold of Asahi’s hand and drags him off down the hallway. “Come see my room,” he demands. “Tanaka helped me paint it, but wait ‘til you see.” 

(Nishinoya is holding his hand. Nishinoya is holding his hand. _Nishinoya is holding his hand—_ )

To Asahi’s surprise, Nishinoya’s room is clean. Well, as clean as it gets for a teenaged boy. It’s mostly free of clutter; a stray _Volleyball Monthly_ magazine is on the floor, dog-eared and open to a spotlight article about EJP Raijin’s libero. A lamp sits on a mostly-clean brown desk, where a bulky desktop computer looms. Three of the four walls are a pale blue, but the wall around the window has Asahi stopping in his tracks. 

“Is that Karasuno orange?” he asks, blinking at it. 

“Yep,” Nishinoya answers proudly, puffing up his chest. “We matched it to my uniform and everything.” 

“Uh-huh.” Asahi is staring at it. It does not fit the rest of the room at all. “It’s very… bright.” 

Outside the window, the sky has darkened rapidly; the grey clouds from the horizon are now nearly overhead and are a looming purple. 

Nishinoya grins at him. “You like it?” His fingers squeeze around Asahi’s palm.

It’s only then that Asahi realizes that Nishinoya hasn’t let go of his hand. “Uh. Yeah,” he manages, feeling his blush move up through his cheeks and into the tips of his ears. “It’s very you,” he says, and he’s not lying. “I like it.” 

The libero looks pleased and he finally drops Asahi’s hand to step away. Asahi feels a faint sense of loss at that, but Nishinoya is already sitting down at his desk and pressing a button on the PC tower to turn it on. “You can sit on the bed if you want,” the other boy instructs, gesturing towards it with a hand as the blue login screen appears. “I’m pulling up a game for us to play.” 

Asahi sits, feeling a bit awkward, but the mattress is soft and he sinks into it comfortably. Nishinoya chatters about nothing and everything as he boots up Sims 2. He opens up the family creator, and gets to work creating a man with long, brown hair in a bun and brown eyes and – _oh_ , he’s making Asahi. Nishinoya glances up and sideways at him, a cheeky grin growing on his lips as he evaluates the height of Asahi’s cheekbones. 

“You’re making me next,” Nishinoya says matter-of-factly, turning back to the screen to adjust a slider, and Asahi feels the blush deepen. 

Evening dips into night. After the initial (nearly hour-long) excitement of making their Sims, the game swiftly starts to lose its appeal, and before long the two boys are sprawled on the floor, ankles barely touching, flipping through pages of _Volleyball Monthly_ and drawing sharpie mustaches on the faces of pro players whose interviews they find too scripted or blasé. At some point, the brushing of ankles becomes a linking of ankles, Nishinoya’s resting atop Asahi’s, and it’s _weird_ … but it’s also so _normal_. Nishinoya’s skin is static against his own; Asahi wonders if the other boy can hear just how fast his heart is beating. 

When the yawns finally become too much, Nishinoya pulls the futon out of the bathroom linen closet and unrolls it on his bedroom floor, then looks at Asahi. He looks back at the futon. Back at Asahi.

“You’re taking the bed,” he says seriously, but the corner of his mouth is quirked upwards. “This futon is meant for _normal_ -sized people. Your feet are going to be hanging out the end.” 

_He’s implying you’re weird,_ the little voice in Asahi’s head says, but he ignores it. 

“Are you sure?” he asks, hesitant, and Nishinoya nods vehemently. He’s flicking off the lights and is under the covers and making himself comfortable within moments. Rain starts to patter on the roof above. Slowly, reluctantly, uneasily, Asahi slips into the bed. It’s the same size as his bed back home, but the mattress doesn’t sink down the same way. The pillows are too plush and feathery. The sheets don’t smell like his detergent. 

He inhales. 

They smell like Nishinoya.

The flush is suddenly back in his cheeks, and he rolls over to look at the boy in the futon on the floor below. “You’re sure about this?” he asks again, and Nishinoya’s brown eyes flick towards him, eagle-eyed and sharp. 

“I’m sure,” he says.

The rain intensifies, lashing at the windows. 

Thunder rumbles through the house. 

If Asahi hadn’t been watching Nishinoya’s face at the time, he probably would have missed it. Instead, he catches the subtle way Nishinoya’s eyes widen, how his nostrils flare, the way his shoulders tense. It’s an image Asahi has seen in himself – the flinch, the realization, the rapid cloaking of panic – too many times, and it’s absolutely not something he ever would have expected to see in someone else, let alone the boy staring back at him right now. “Nishinoya?”

The boy grants him a perfectly masked smile. “Asahi-san?” he replies, and he’s trying to add a note of teasing to his voice, but there’s a barely-audible tremor hiding beneath the words. 

Asahi sees right through it. 

He opens his mouth, his hand creeping to the edge of the bed – he doesn’t know whether to reach out in comfort or not, whether it would be received well, whether Nishinoya would see it as an insult – when a flash of lightning lights up the sky beyond the window. Barely a second later thunder rumbles again, louder this time, and Nishinoya’s carefully constructed mask slips. He flinches away, pulling the blanket a little closer to his chest. He breathes out a long sigh, eyes flickering up to meet Asahi’s, and his smile this time wavers. “I don’t like storms,” he murmurs and for once he’s quiet, an ember flickering among the blankets, dampened by the rain. “I was hoping this one would pass.” 

Asahi doesn’t know what to say. He’s not good at this, the comforting thing. He’s always been the one comforted, the one held, the one soothed. It sounds like someone is pouring buckets of water onto the roof above them. Between that and the pounding in his chest, he can barely hear himself think. 

It’s instinct that has his hand slipping off the side of the bed, reaching for Nishinoya. “I don’t like storms either,” he murmurs. 

Small, blisteringly-warm fingers entwine with his, and the smile is a little more real this time, a little less uncertain. “That doesn’t surprise me.” 

The next thunderclap sounds with a deafening _’crack’_ that makes both of them jump, tightening their grips on each other’s hand. Nishinoya closes his eyes and lets out a soft, shaky laugh, his shoulders tensed next to his ears. “Can you…” he starts, and then he exhales, letting out a long breath before inhaling to speak again. “Next to the window, stuck in the corner there, there’s a stuffed dog plushie. Can you get it for me?” 

Nishinoya’s palm burns against his skin. “Yeah,” Asahi says, and tentatively pulls away to roll across the bed. He shoves a hand into the corner and feels his fingers close upon something soft and plush and worn. When he draws it out, a patchy, well-loved dog stares back at him from one button eye. _Cute_.

“What’s its name?” he asks, rolling back to drop the dog into Nishinoya’s waiting hand. 

Nishinoya pulls it close to his chest, hugging it beneath the blanket. “Wanko-chan,” he replies, and his laugh doesn’t hold a trace of embarrassment. “My grandpa got her for me when I was little. I used to be scared of dogs, and the first time I pet a dog all on my own he came home with her.” 

Lightning flashes. They both tense, waiting for the thunder to reverberate through the house again. Asahi finds himself reaching out, and Nishinoya’s free hand finds his just as the rumble begins. 

It dies away and Asahi finds words at his lips. “I used to not be able to sleep without my stuffed animals,” he says, and he can barely even hear himself over the sound of the rain at the window. On the floor below, Nishinoya shifts closer. “I stopped doing it when I was thirteen.” 

“Why?” 

Asahi’s hand is sweating. Nishinoya puts out so much heat; it’s no wonder he rarely wears a jacket after practice, his metabolism must be off the charts. It seeps into Asahi’s skin, flowing through his veins until it’s tracing Lichtenberg figures around his heart. His smile is small and wry. “Because I didn’t want to need anyone,” he replies. 

It’s tiny, almost imperceptible, but Asahi thinks he sees a spark flare in Nishinoya’s eyes. “Why?” he asks again. He sits up a little straighter, tightening his grasp on Asahi’s hand. “What’s wrong with needing someone?” There’s a familiar warning note in his voice and Asahi hears the echoing snap of a mop handle, the faint shattering of a vase. “What’s wrong with needing help?” 

It feels strange to talk about this so suddenly. Asahi has locked these memories away in his chest for so long, not wanting to feel the tile beneath him or hear the fear and tears in Miyako’s voice as she tries to soothe him through the panic attack. But there’s something so unprecedently _present_ about Nishinoya, about his willingness to show off his childhood fears in the form of a ratty plush, about the way he confidently threads his fingers between Asahi’s and grips his hand close. 

Nishinoya’s gaze is electricity, a static shock pinning Asahi to the bed. _‘I practiced block receives.’_

Outside, lightning flashes. 

The realization hits Asahi at the same time as the thunder. 

“Nothing,” he replies, but the word is a breath and is drowned out by the prolonged rumble. Nishinoya squints at him, so he repeats himself, and then: “I just didn’t realize it until recently.” 

Nishinoya sits up fully and scoots closer, crossing his legs. Wanko-chan sits in his lap, peering up at Asahi with that one-eyed stare. “Everyone needs someone,” Nishinoya says, and now his other hand rests on top of his and Asahi’s clasped fingers. “Maybe not 100% of the time, but you’re never alone, not really. Not on the court, and not off the court either.” He squeezes Asahi’s hand between his. 

Asahi shifts, lying on his stomach to take the weight off his other arm, and rests his own free hand atop Nishinoya’s. “I know that.” 

“Do you?” Nishinoya asks.

Lightning strikes tinder. A breeze – soft and tender in quiet moments, powerful enough to pull trees up by their roots during storms – dances around the burgeoning flame. 

When Nishinoya kisses him, together they become wildfire. 

~ x X x ~

_Epilogue:_

Asahi used to hate sleeping in the same bed as someone else. 

It used to make him think of dark, endless nights and tile floors and creeping panic. He spent months training himself to sleep alone and spent years cowed by his own fears. 

Now, Asahi sleeps partially on his stomach, partially on his side, resting his cheek in the narrow space between the pillows. One arm scoops up and out, tucked under the pillows. The other curls around Nishinoya’s waist, pulling him close until his soft hair tickles the goatee on Asahi’s chin. They breathe together, chests rising and falling in tandem. 

Partially hidden beneath a pillow on Asahi’s other side, a ratty stuffed dog with one button for an eye lies draped, nearly falling off the side of the mattress. On a dresser across the room, a row of plush animals – some nearly as old as Asahi, others picked up from various destinations within the last year – is lined up next to an open _Volleyball Monthly_ featuring the newly announced Japanese National Team. 

Thunder booms outside the hotel window. Nishinoya curls in a little tighter. 

In his sleep, Asahi smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks as usual to [siliquastrum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/siliquastrum) for the support while writing <3
> 
> please feel free to leave kudos or a comment, it will make my day!


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